Tag: Business Development
Sales and Business Tips – [Webinar] What’s Missing in Your Sales Journey? The Sales Masterclass for SaaS C-Suite
Have you you considered each step of the lead journey process from prospect to client? How do you nurture your leads and keep track of the journey?
‘48% of businesses say most of their leads require “long cycle” nurturing with many influencers’. (Ascend2)
Lead Journey Infographic
Have you got your lead journey clearly mapped out?
‘Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost’ (Forrester, 2014).
Click on the below to view this infographic that easily walks you through the entire lead journey process from prospect to client.
Sales and Business Tips – How do you get a decision maker on board
Sales and Business Tips – How to Navigate Gate Keepers
The Office Environment Creates Success
Today, businesses are keen to concentrate on successful recruitment processes, robust 1-2-1 systems, competitive pay grades and offering the right benefits. All of this comes in an attempt to attract and retain excellent employees that constantly perform to the best of their ability. However, reality suggests that businesses are also becoming increasingly demanding of the people that they should be working hard to look after.
Recently, the Mental Health Foundation released figures which state that work-related stress costs Britain 10.4 million working days per year. An increasingly demanding work culture, in the UK, forces longer hours, less manageable workloads and heightens the intensity of constant comparison amongst peers in a race to stay ahead.
Businesses should be concentrating on, a healthier office environment which results in employees waking up on Monday, enthusiastic to come to work. Below are my three top tips to fostering a healthy and encouraging office environment:
The life-changing magic of tidying
With our minds often reflecting the environment in which we find ourselves, there are a lot of factors we should start considering to better our office surroundings and withdraw the best attitude from our employees, fellow colleagues and ourselves.
Marie Kondo, a Japanese organising consultant and author, has written 4 books on the art of decluttering. Her book ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up’ has been well received in more than 30 countries and her simple but sought after method has consequently led her to appear as one of the Times ‘100 most influential people’. Aside from helping millions organise their sock draw; her book explains how cluttered disorganised spaces have a negative impact on our minds and how we choose to process our day.
In a world where the restless mind often wreaks havoc, encouraging a spacious, clear and organised office environment will allow efficiency, concentration and motivation to flourish. The art of organisation, natural light and the odd office plant will boost energy levels and increases employee well-being.
An open office
We associate an open door with opportunity. An open office space allows us to form strong relationships, build good rapport with others and gives us an opportunity to absorb the culture – whether it be peaceful and calm or buzzing with energy. The opportunity to be part of a team, working towards the same goal, allows us to immediately feel a strong sense of belonging.
According to Maslow’s motivational theory in psychology, belongingness increases motivation, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs.
A high level of motivation will lead to new clients won, individual targets met and a positivity which can be absorbed by the whole office.
The right culture reflected
Hard work and achievement requires recognition to create an overall feeling of appreciation.
Sometimes it’s the little things that impact us the most, a thumbs up from our manager or a well done from our colleague. Knowing we are surrounded by support (at all levels) allows us to take on new tasks with confidence and grow and develop as individuals.
Recent surveys have shown that the more employees felt appreciated at work, the more they were committed to their jobs, the better equipped they were to handle stresses of client demands and deadlines and the less likely they were to take time off work.
The concept of a good workplace has been a part of office culture for decades, but many business owners still don’t know all that this entails and why it’s important.
So many different aspects of the office environment effect employee motivation, productivity and even retention.
No relationship is effortless
Getting the simple stuff right is becoming increasingly more important if you want your business, employees and colleagues to thrive.
As a manager or business owner encouraging continual feedback from both your perspective and your current employees will ensure essential needs are met in the aspiration of achieving a happy successful environment for everyone.
Opinion Piece by Samantha Bennett, Human Resources, Air Marketing Group
Setting business development goals will help you win clients and influence your team
We all know how important sales are, without sales your business won’t grow, and without growth, your business will collapse. Therefore, it is essential to account for sales and business development within your company.
Whether you’re managing your business development in-house or outsourcing to an agency, implementing a thought-out strategy will help to win you clients and give you the ability to positively influence the individuals within your company.
8 tips that will help you implement a successful business development strategy.
- Identify long-term goals:
82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.
However, have you ever questioned why this might be?
Tips:
- Establish what success looks like for your business
- Ask why you’re deploying a business development strategy. Have you experienced a drop in inbound enquiries, are you lacking qualified leads or are you aiming to make enquires more consistent?
- Set clear milestones and incentives to achieve the changes needed to reach success and give your team something to work towards
- Measure your current performance:
65% of CEOs rated “inclusive growth” as a top-three strategic concern.
Today, businesses are no longer assessed on traditional metrics, instead their relationships with workers and their impact on society is just as important as financial growth and this, in turn, heavily affects success.
Tips:
- Combine revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support the people which make up your environment
- Invest in a performance management tool. The Performance Climate System for example, is a management tool which can extract information on the current productivity, climate and perception gap between your team and the leaders
- Allow your leaders to implement the changes needed for a more positive environment, a boost in team engagement are highly linked to an increase in sales
- Establish what clients you’re looking to win:
42% of start-ups failed in 2017 because there wasn’t a market for their offering.
Not everyone wants to buy what you’re selling, which is why it’s so important that you identify the needs of your target market.
Tips:
- Think quality over quantity
- Create a client profile to give you a clear indication of who needs your product or service, understand their pain points and what long term goals you can help them to achieve
If you’re looking for ‘The Ultimate Guide To B2B Sales Prospecting’, Air’s Group Director, Richard Forrest has all the tips in this world-class book.
- Hunt down your next opportunity:
80% of buyers are those which you must go out and find and it may take an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach them.
Tips:
- Pick up the phone and be persistent in your efforts to build rapport.
- Focus on your prospects need and be prepared to objection handle. For 3 killer ways to handle objections, take a read of our blog here.
- Don’t become a sales robot, your priority is client satisfaction, so don’t let the relationship go cold.
- Make sure your new opportunities qualify:
Business Development Executives make between 100 and 500 calls for every lead they qualify.
Setting qualifying criteria is a way of making sure your business is concentrating on leads that can really benefit you.
Tips:
- Be clear on the decision makers you need to be talking to and what makes a good meeting
- Analyse your prospects BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe)
Need more tips on the golden questions you should be asking to qualify leads? Read more here.
- Top ‘Sales Professionals’ don’t sell:
Being a sales professional is not actually about selling, it’s about building relationships and solving problems.
Tips:
- You must be out there, have a presence and be the expert. Offer guidance, regardless of whether it results in a sale or not. You can guarantee that the person you helped, with no immediate benefit to yourself, will come back or refer your next customer
- Use your marketing resources:
Lack of integration between the two can result in wasted efforts and lost opportunities.
Tips:
- Partner with a marketing agency or department! Events, content and consistent company messages can really help nurture leads through your pipeline and close deals
- Checkout our sister company, Roots to Market, who can offer a full-service approach to your marketing strategy or aid in bespoke projects such a nurture campaigns
- How do you know you’ve achieved success?
Business Development is a long-term investment.
Tips:
- Remain realistic when visualising what your success looks like, how much you’re prepared to invest and how long success will take you
- When you have reached your initial end goal, it’s time to start the process again, establish what success looks like now, set a more ambitions turnover, find new competitors, hunt for more rewarding opportunities and create new milestones in order to progress further up the ladder
Done well, Business Development has the potential to transform the dynamic of your business and get you working with more of the right clients. Whether in-house or outsourced, everyone who touches your Business Development Strategy needs to be fully engaged in your long-term ambitions and understand what needs to be achieved to get there.
Get in touch:
Need help with reaching your audience, increasing your client base and growing your business? Contact #TeamAir today on 03332 581394 or via contact@air-marketing.co.uk
Is your sales strategy focused on your business or your customers?
The first rule of customer service is that the customer is always right. Right?
With this in mind, shouldn’t all good business strategies place the customer at the heart of the campaign? Whilst this may seem to be true, it appears companies can sometimes find themselves strategising solely on where the business can go, as opposed to what the business can also do for its customers.
In 2018, 90% of adults in the UK defined themselves as recent internet users, up from 89% in 2017 (Office of National Statistics). Due to the developments in digital media, a customer has everything at their fingertips to make a decision about you before they have even spoken to you, as this information can now be found on social media posts, peer reviews or elsewhere on the internet. It seems that it is no longer always essential for customers to go through sales teams to make a decision on whether or not they want to invest in your product or service. It is therefore essential that when your sales team do engage with your pipeline, they are providing an outstanding experience which focuses on the customer, optimising sales and productivity.
Increasingly, marketers are implementing sales strategies which place their customers at the centre of their business plans, something which is highly recommended by Air. A study by Cap Gemini found that returning customers bring a 23% increase in profits and revenues. It also showed that returning customers spend an average 67% more than a new customer. For this reason, it is essential to create a strategy which better allows you to retain customers as well as encouraging new sales.
It is key to know as much as possible about the behaviours, needs and desires of your business’ customers. When marketers listen to this information they can complement your business strategy by creating customer-focused initiatives which will boost value and profits.
At Air we understand the importance of keeping clients happy and from our initial conversations with clients we get the ball rolling. Our first step, once they decide to go ahead and work with Air, is a strategy meeting which ensures their expert knowledge is kept at the forefront of their campaign; this meeting also enables us to present campaign concepts to reach the best solution for their objectives before we begin dialling. From the outset we want our clients to be happy, confident and informed on what we are doing for them. This level of clarity continues throughout the process, as shown by our client portal. Unique in the industry, the portal allows our clients to track their campaigns in live time providing them with the ability to watch the reactions their prospective customers are having to their products.
Transparency and engagement are essential concepts within our business strategy, as they allow us to maintain trusting relationships between ourselves and our clients. Cap Gemini found that disengaged customers cause a 13% fall in profits. At Air we foster engagement by encouraging our clients to use our office spaces as a base, or to pop in or call and chat with us as and when they feel the need to.
Our client-focused business strategy allows our business to function like a friendship, if we extend a level of familiarity to our clients they will reciprocate by continuing to work with us and in turn referring others to do so too. Receiving recommendations is a key part of our business strategy as future customers are more likely to trust a brand backed by an industry equal or someone they know.
We encourage our clients to leave us testimonials in order to reach out to their community. By allowing our current customers to have a voice and input to our brand it shows prospective clients that we value the opinion of those we work with and want to create strong relationships with them.
For us it isn’t all about the money, it is about the people. To find out more about how we engage with you, your business and your customers please contact us via phone: 0345 241 3038 or via email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.
Do you actually need a marketing plan?
Perhaps we could look at this question from a different angle, would you start a business without a business marketing plan?
The answer is of course, no! But why should the approach to marketing be any different? You are going to be investing in marketing and if done correctly, marketing will deliver ROI to grow your client base, revenue and ultimately business. It is therefore a critical aspect of your go to market strategy and should be thought through and planned.
Do you appreciate the importance of marketing?
You would expect us to ask this question, we are a marketing agency, we feel that marketing is vital to business success. But let’s explore this question.
For your business to survive, and of course thrive in a market place you have to attract and retain your customers. But if your business never told the market what you offer, why you are better than your competitors, your ethics, why you exist etc, then would customers simply come to you? No doubt a small number may stumble across you, but it’s unlikely that you will attract the number of customers needed for your business to survive.
Marketing is not simply the expensive advertising campaign you see on TV or the brochure that will cost a lot to produce and may quickly become outdated. It’s likely that marketing will have an influence over every touchpoint that your customers experience; from your telephone message, your welcome email, that customer service call or a client portal login. The messaging, branding, look and feel are all influenced by marketing.
Why create a marketing plan?
A plan gives you the opportunity to really understand:
* Who you want to target, why and how you will reach them?
* It prompts you to assess your competitors, what activity are they doing, could you be doing something similar?
* And to dive into your product or service – put your customer hat on, why would you purchase your product or use your service, are the benefits clear?
All of these questions need to be thoroughly thought through to carry out effective business marketing.
Putting this into a plan, allows you to focus your resource (time as well as capital) alongside specific, measurable timeframes and goals. This plan will help you with the day to day running of your business; sensible and realistic resources allocated ahead of time, will help you manage performance of your marketing efforts. This will keep your team motivated and allow you to test, refine and edit activity to produce the best results.
The marketing plan is your roadmap, it provides you with clear direction making it straight forward to align execution and reporting to your objectives.
You don’t have to do it alone…
Planning your marketing for 6 months, 1 year or even 2 years in advance can seem daunting but you don’t have to undertake this task alone. In fact, having an outside perspective involved with your planning, asking different questions, challenging your thinking – can produce even better results.
And don’t forget this is not a one-off exercise that is completed and stored to never be looked at again. This is a living plan, to be referred to, updated and amended regularly – make it your friend not your foe. Find out more about marketing planning with Roots to Market here.
How well do you know your customers?
‘Know your customer’ has become quite a cliché in marketing. There has never been a business that didn’t start out fulfilling unmet needs for a very specific group of people.
We suspect you probably know your customer fairly well, but let’s turn this question on its head and instead ask:
How well do you know your prospects?
Air Marketing Group know that a lack of qualified prospects moving through your sales process today, can mean trouble for your business tomorrow. We understand that a strong sales pipeline is critical to attain revenue goals 6 – 12 months from now.
So what steps should you take to build and sustain a healthy sales pipeline?
Start with enough leads
Sales is a numbers game and to develop a strong sales pipeline you must accumulate enough leads to drive through your marketing and sales engine. If you have a good understanding of the pipeline process you’ll know only a proportion of your targeted leads will become qualified, and a fraction will convert and be ready to buy at any given time.
Qualify every lead
Generating a list of qualifying questions to ask every interested lead will allow you to determine if there’s a real business opportunity or not.
Ask: Has your prospect got a realistic need you can fill?
- What are their major challenges in this area?
- Have they tried to solve these issues? If so, how?
- How soon do they want to find a solution?
Ask: Is the prospect an appropriate lead for the value and price point of your offering?
- What solutions would they consider?
- What is the budget to address this solution?
Be careful of time wasters. If it appears there’s little budget for your solution, put this lead into your low-quality category and concentrate on higher priority prospects.
Use lead quality for targeted marketing
It’s important to use resulting lead quality data to develop more tailored campaigns. At Air Marketing all our campaigns use bespoke lead generation strategies and are tailored to meet individual business requirements. This strategy allows us to provide clients with quality sales leads that meet specified criteria.
Nurture qualified prospects
Not every qualified prospect will be ready to buy today. Once qualified leads have been identified you can leverage the use of content based email marketing, and follow up calls, to continue to nurture leads and identify interested prospects.
Create a next step for every interested lead. Base this on need, interest and timing:
- Schedule a demo or follow up call to share additional insights.
- Send a follow up email that needs a response within a requested time.
- Send an industry-related article every month to stay in touch and keep educating them.
Remaining in front of interested, qualified prospects will mean you are at the front of their mind to assist when the time of their need arises.
CRM systems
A customer relationship management system (CRM) will improve your sales efficiencies, and allow you to track and report on sales opportunities, leads and prospects.
Remember a healthy sales pipeline will have the following attributes:
- Many opportunities at every stage of the funnel.
- New opportunities coming into the top of the funnel regularly.
- New sales being converted at the bottom of the sales funnel regularly .
Here at Air Marketing Group, we pride ourselves on our ability to get under the skin of your business, speaking with your prospects and where possible and relevant warm the lead into a position where they can be converted into an opportunity. In addition to this, we provide a transparent reporting service, and the delivery of each call recording to ensure our clients that any leads we’ve secured will convert.
If knowing your prospect is still an area you would like help with get in touch today to find out how we can help on 03452413038 or get in touch.
